


And Then Karen Snapped

by AquaEclipse



Category: Original Work
Genre: Assault, Entitled Parents, Entitled People, Florida, Gen, McDonald's, Snark, Summer Vacation, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 10:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25968049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquaEclipse/pseuds/AquaEclipse
Summary: Prompt: You and your family are on a two week trip overseas during the summer break. Write a diary entry about an amusing incident that took place yesterday.ft. r/floridaman and r/entitledparents
Relationships: Undisclosed Relationship(s)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 5





	And Then Karen Snapped

**Author's Note:**

> I understand that this piece of writing may seem a little dull compared with my other works, but I wrote this fairly quickly with minimal beta reading since I was rushing to submit this for homework last night, so please forgive me.
> 
> Prompt: You and your family are on a two week trip overseas during the summer break. Write a diary entry about an amusing incident that took place yesterday. Write 350-400 words.  
> (Joke's on them, I wrote 765, and don't worry, doubling the required wordcount on my writing assignments is a regular occurrence for me.)
> 
> A special shout-out to the subreddits r/floridaman and r/entitledparents for having to deal with such insanity.
> 
> CW: Entitlement, mentions of obesity, assault, mild USA bashing, etc.

28 July 

To celebrate my sister’s graduation from primary school, our parents have chosen to take the yearly family holiday to her dream destination of Orlando, Florida, so that she could visit Walt Disney World. Our first few days in the US were relatively peaceful, and we were able to tour all of Disney World without any big problems other than extremely long queues.

After visiting the “Happiest Place on Earth”, we decided to just go sightseeing around the city, since we are going to be here for the next week as well. Following a trip to the Zoo yesterday, we chose to dine at a McDonald’s a few streets away. Some of the menu options differ from those we have back in good old Hong Kong, and the portion sizes are significantly bigger, but I guess this is what happens when companies localize to fit the local palate.

We were just talking about our day at our table when the door jingled open, and a sizable family entered the restaurant. It was a blonde, overweight woman with her hair in a choppy bob haircut, followed by a gaggle of children trailing behind her. There was no spouse of hers in sight. When she marched up to the counter as though she owned the premises, I heard someone from the next table mutter a profanity under their breath, and instantaneously, I knew what was about to happen, so I pulled out my camera and started filming.

“Hi, how can I help you?” asked the cashier pleasantly.

“I want to order six Happy Meals with chicken nuggets, a Big Mac meal…” the woman rattled off for so long that I wondered how many of her kids were going to contribute to the already high US obesity rate.

“Why is she ordering so much food? Can she eat it all?” my sister asked me after tapping me on the shoulder.

“Just you wait and see,” I replied darkly. I was familiar enough with stories of entitled people to know exactly where this was going, and in Florida too? I mean, since Florida is the ‘hotbed’ of crazy people in the US, I knew I was going to encounter some strange headline during our stay in the Sunshine State. I just wasn’t anticipating being there to witness one of those stories for myself.

When the woman - I’ll call her Karen from now on, after the meme she was personifying - ended her extremely long order with a soft-serve ice-cream cone, the cashier answered, “I’m sorry, ma’am, the ice-cream is broken. Would you like-”

Then Karen exploded. She started screaming and ranting about how the ice-cream machine could be broken when she and her kids had had a long day and that they “deserved” free compensation, and that she demanded to speak to the manager of the restaurant. _Oh, look, there she goes_ , I thought as I witnessed the conversation on what was virtually the front aisle.

Several employees emerged to try to calm Karen down, but it only made her angrier. She lifted up the hapless cashier serving her by the collar of their uniform and started screaming in their face and threatening to sue the restaurant. Unsurprisingly, some people waiting in the queue to order their dinner were also holding their phones up vertically to film the ongoings. Some of the children’s faces were tinged red, I suspect from embarrassment, and two of the toddlers began to wail at the top of their lungs.

I’m quite sure that the event was quite traumatizing for the cashier, but as a spectator from outside of the US, it just seemed ridiculous to me how a woman could be so entitled as to threaten to sue a restaurant over not being able to buy more ice-cream to thicken her waistline even more. I wondered what the headlines would be the next morning if I sent this to a news site - _Florida woman threatens McDonald’s cashier over broken ice-cream machine_ would be my choice for how to title the article, and people _would_ be able to use such a blatant headline because of Floridian news transparency laws.

Eventually, Karen stormed off from the restaurant with her car-load of kids without her excessively long order. The cashier looked rather shaken, and for the rest of the evening, a different cashier served the rest of the customers in ordering their food. When we left the restaurant after a surprisingly eventful day, I uploaded the video to Reddit, and by this morning, as we prepared to go sightseeing some more, the posts had blown up.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed this.


End file.
